


Go Catch a Falling Star

by Atalan



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Hopeful Ending, Immortality, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Romance, Suicidal Thoughts, not quite as bleak as it sounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 08:26:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5960737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atalan/pseuds/Atalan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(AU) (Humanfic) It was only supposed to be a short mission. He was supposed to be home in time for Silverbolt's birthday. It wasn't supposed to end with strangers pulling Skyfire out of stasis and telling him 100 years had passed.</p><p>(NO CONNECTION to "Easy as Falling" except the general background of how gestalts work in humans.)</p><p>(08/05/16: added an epilogue, but it's really finished now.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In the Ice

**Author's Note:**

> So one day I was just minding my own business when this story demanded to be written despite breaking my heart into tiny pieces even to contemplate. It will be in three parts. As usual I recommend sticking with me to the end, because you know I can't quite bear to leave things truly without some sort of hope.

Stasis was a life-saver. No-one could deny that. Unsurvivable space accidents became survivable as long as the crew of a ship had time to get into the pods, and as long as the pods made it through the disaster intact. Nothing could save a ship that exploded with no warning, but that was thankfully rare, and with stasis on hand, the terror of slow suffocation due to life support malfunction was significantly decreased.

Of course, that all assumed that somebody _found_ the ship, and the stasis pods, after the accident. With modern tracking systems on all standard shipping, that was the norm. But Skyfire flew missions into deep space, alone, with lightyears between him and the nearest other vessel, and he had always been secretly terrified whenever he stepped into a pod, even when it was just a precaution.

Every time, he would imagine drifting alone in the void, locked in oblivion, waiting for a rescue that never came. In theory, a good stasis field – and Skyfire made sure he used only the best – could keep you alive as long as the power source lasted... and that could be hundreds, _thousands_ of years. You'd die there eventually, completely unaware of the time that had passed. You wouldn't even know it was happening. It was the most terrifying thing Skyfire could imagine.

At least, it was, until they pulled him out of a stasis deeper than any he had ever known, that left him weak and disorientated and throwing up violently on the medbay floor, and told him a hundred years had passed.

* * *

He didn't believe it at first. How could he? It was a nightmare, a scenario he had never anticipated, even though people had been writing prime-time drama about it since the invention of the technology. He told them they must be interpreting the pod's clock wrong, misreading the data they'd downloaded.

They looked at him with pity and told him they hadn't been able to download anything from the pod. It was a model that had been obsolete for fifty years. None of their current technology would interface with it. It was a miracle they'd been able to revive him.

That was when Skyfire broke down and begged them to bring Silverbolt to him, begged until he was almost screaming through his tears. No amount of logic could drag him from that desperation until they drugged him into an unconsciousness that was blessedly warm, compared to the cold of stasis, but just as free of thought or emotion.

* * *

They woke him up more slowly from this second sleep, and that helped, a little, but it could do nothing to ease the utter blackness of grief and despair that waited for him.

 _Silverbolt is long dead,_ his mind whispered in a dull, passionless chant. _And Fireflight, Slingshot, Air Raid, Skydive. Jazz. Perceptor. Optimus Prime. Even Starscream, assuming anything could kill Starscream. The war is over. The war is over and the people attending you find it strange and quaint when you refer to yourself as an Autobot. And Silverbolt is dead. Silverbolt is dead._

They couldn't give him any information, they said, even when he begged. The psychiatrist assigned to him 24/7 told him that it would eventually help, to know about the lives of the people he'd loved, but that at this stage the detail could be devastating, and that he needed to absorb the general reality before he would be ready to read his husband's obituary. Skyfire argued that he _couldn't_ accept it until he'd seen it irrevocably printed on a screen, but when Dr Switch finally relented and promised to find names and dates for him in the next few days, Skyfire found himself awake half the night, throwing up in the bathroom from dread and misery.

It had taken them a while to locate his MIA report, lost beneath a century of other data on accidents and missing craft, but the next day they told him they had finally been able to retrieve the record of his mission and mark him as rescued.

Skyfire didn't feel like he had been rescued. For the first time in his life, he wished, without a second of doubt, that he were dead.

* * *

The doctor who knocked on the door seemed perturbed. Skyfire wondered if they were aware of how much time he'd spent slumped on the bathroom floor in the last few days. Maybe they'd give him some anti-sickness meds. Or something stronger. Right now, he could really go for some morphine, or whatever new version had been developed. Preferably in one big, comfortable, lethal dose.

"Er... there's someone here to see you," said the doctor, and Skyfire's near-hysterical thought train ground to a screeching halt.

"Huh?" he managed, eloquently.

"He says he knows you," the doctor went on, clearly just as confused as Skyfire. "I told him he'd need to talk to Dr Switch before he could see you, but he's got some sort of... rank or something, I don't really understand, and the Head of Recovery told me to come and tell you. He says he wants to meet you face to face rather than talking on the wire. The Head says it's up to you. He thinks you should wait for Dr Switch, though."

Skyfire raised his hands to his face, covering his eyes as he tried to process this. How could anyone he'd known still be alive? They couldn't. Dr Switch was going to bring him the information about their deaths very soon. Maybe, he thought, "know you" was a generous term. Maybe it was someone who knew _of_ him. Or maybe... the thought crept in... maybe a child - no, a grandchild, by now - of someone who had known him...

He almost said no, but anything was better than sitting alone with the nightmare, even if it only brought more pain. Maybe he could get some answers before Dr Switch came back with the results of his research. Or maybe the visitor would have a gun and a generous policy about lending it to hospital patients.

"I'll see him," Skyfire said, and waited, for five minutes that stretched into eons, as the doctor hurried away to collect his unexpected guest.

Footsteps outside the door, a hesitation, and then a knock. It took Skyfire a moment to remember that he was supposed to say, "Come in."

The door opened.

Silverbolt walked in.

* * *

The last time Skyfire had seen Silverbolt had been the day of the launch, all business on the comm screen in his role as Air Commander.

The last time he'd seen his _husband_ had been the night before, when Skyfire had headed into the pre-flight prep quarters as usual. Silverbolt was seldom clingy, but he had wrapped his arms so tightly around Skyfire that it almost hurt, and held him for a long time in silence.

"I keep thinking it's going to get easier," he'd said when they finally had to admit they were out of time. "But it never does."

"I know," Skyfire had replied, eyes closed, face pressed against Silverbolt's hair. "At least this time it's only a month."

" _Only_ a month?" Silverbolt had sighed, and then he'd forestalled any further conversation by kissing Skyfire with all the passion and silent promise seven years of marriage had woven between them. "I love you. Fly safely."

Skyfire had flown as safely as he knew how, but space was vast, and full of dangers, and not all of them were Decepticon traps. Sometimes a micrometeor strike at just the wrong moment, just the wrong angle, just between cycles of the shields, could end your life, in one way or another.

* * *

Silverbolt had stopped just inside the door, his eyes locked on Skyfire, and Skyfire almost screamed as his fragile grasp of this new reality faltered.

"Sil--" he couldn't even get Silverbolt's name out. "Wh... what..."

And something broke behind Silverbolt's eyes, something Skyfire recognised as the iron self-restraint he had learned young, and the next second, Silverbolt was almost falling the handful of steps across the room into Skyfire's arms. Skyfire grabbed onto him as if he would drown without Silverbolt as anchor, and maybe that wasn't so far from the truth as he wondered if his mind had _broken_ , if he was now fully into psychosis, and at the same time all the warmth and scent and reality of Silverbolt crashed into his every sense, and he buried his face in Silverbolt's shoulder and started to cry.

"Oh my god, Skyfire," Silverbolt whispered, arms so tight around him they were shaking. "Skyfire. Skyfire."

If Silverbolt could only say his name, it was more than Skyfire could manage for some time. When he finally found words, they were muffled against Silverbolt's shoulder, desperate and lost and punctuated with the first strands of a terrible hope.

"Were they lying? About the time that's passed? Is everyone--"

"No," Silverbolt said, voice catching, still holding Skyfire like he would never let go. "No. I'm sorry. They were-- it really has been... a hundred years."

"But you..." Skyfire raised his head and pushed Silverbolt back the tiniest fraction, staring at his face. "But you look exactly the same..."

But he didn't, now that Skyfire was looking properly. He didn't look old, but he didn't look young any more, either. He could still pass for thirty-five, but a long look at his face suggested there were more decades behind it than flesh would admit. Fine lines and a sharpening of his features gave him a gravitas that outweighed his apparent youth, even though there was no sign of grey in his golden hair.

"Did you... were you in stasis, too?" he guessed, but Silverbolt was already shaking his head, even as he studied Skyfire's face with the glimmer of tears in his eyes.

"No," Silverbolt said softly. "It's... more complicated than that."

He carefully drew further away from Skyfire, easing them apart with clear reluctance, and taking Skyfire's hands in his as if he couldn't help himself.

"It's the gestalt tech," Silverbolt went on, looking away from Skyfire's face. "It turned out... oh, I don't even know where to start!" The flash of frustration was so _Silverbolt_ it made Skyfire want to start crying again. "You know the gestalt circuitry is self-repairing."

"Yes," Skyfire whispered, beginning to see the shape of what Silverbolt was saying. "Of course. It was the cutting edge of biotech before the programme was shut down..."

"It still is, in a way." Silverbolt took a deep breath. "Something about the gestalt enhancements... some combination of the technology involved..."

He grimaced, struggling with the words.

"We didn't get older," he said at last, meeting Skyfire's eyes, a faint, haunted memory of past pain in his own. "None of the gestalt teams seemed to age. No-one really realised what was happening until Slingshot's accident--"

"Slingshot? Is he--"

"He's fine. They're all fine. They're all still alive!" For a second, the glimmer of joy broke over Silverbolt's face. "Slingshot should never have walked again, but his body... repaired itself. It took a couple of years, but he recovered completely. After that they started studying us, and that was when they figured out that the gestalt tech had... changed us somehow. Our bodies regenerate damage, within limits. Even the damage caused by aging."

Skyfire blinked, then blinked again, then wondered for a second time whether he had slipped out of the realms of sanity, before the scientific part of his mind, which had lain stunned and silent for too long, grasped hold of the facts and put them together.

"You're functionally immortal," he said. "Excepting massive trauma, you can't die."

Silverbolt looked away again. Skyfire saw the oh-too-familiar shutting down in his face, withdrawing behind shields that had gained a hundred new layers since they'd last looked at each other.

"Yes," Silverbolt said. "I am now a hundred and thirty-seven years old, technically." A ghost of his wry, self-effacing smile almost touched his lips. "Even Fireflight stopped celebrating birthdays after a hundred."

Skyfire wanted to pull him in close again and kiss him, because he recognised that pain in Silverbolt's eyes, the pain wrought by words like 'freak of nature' and 'should never have been allowed', by years of trusting only his gestalt companions until Optimus Prime's faith in his team had swept aside the doubt and suspicion. It was a wound that had been all-but healed, when he last left Silverbolt, but now it had been re-opened and gouged even deeper, the weight of a century behind the blade.

Skyfire wanted to kiss him, but he stopped himself, because the weight of that century brought with it a thousand other implications, the unavoidable legacy of a life that had continued after Skyfire had left it, the sudden awareness that the ring Silverbolt had worn for seven years was no longer on his left hand, the realisation of just _how long_ had passed.

"Are... are we still married?" Skyfire asked, made clumsy by a renewed and fresh grief.

"No," said Silverbolt, flinching as if it hurt.

He too seemed to feel the absence of his ring, and let go of Skyfire's hands. The loss of contact made Skyfire feel very cold and alone.

"You were... declared legally dead, so it... we aren't, any more."

"Of course," Skyfire said, softly so he could keep the waver out of his voice. "And it's been... it's really been a hundred years."

"Yes."

"You... must have moved on." He had to force the words out, but he was glad to hear a neutrality in his own voice. Even with his heart breaking anew, his thoughts were racing ahead, realising how much hurt he could deal to Silverbolt in this moment if he said the wrong thing. "A long time ago."

Silverbolt hesitated. Skyfire had a sudden sense of dizzying balance, a struggle between two opposing impulses, between Silverbolt's star-forged self-control and a longing so bright it burned through the tears that welled in his sky-blue eyes.

"Not as much as I should, it turns out," Silverbolt whispered as self-control lost the battle. "Skyfire, I-- it's been so long, I don't even know-- I don't--- oh, god, _kiss_ me, please--"

His voice broke, tears streaming down his face, as Skyfire took him in his arms and did as he was told.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... more to come.
> 
> Yes, you can throw things at my head if you want.


	2. The Long Road

Silverbolt had lived with fear of death for almost as long as he could remember. Not his own, though. Every mission they flew he lived with the dread of watching one of his brothers go down in flames and being able to do nothing. Every time he wasn't with them, he was waiting for the call to say they'd been shot down. Every time Air Raid took that damned motorbike out on the cliff roads, or Fireflight wandered off in a city that was halfway feudal and full of Decepticon infiltrators. Every time his brothers were doing anything but sleeping, really.

And later, every time Skyfire left Cybertron. Every time Silverbolt heard a whisper of a space craft accident, every time Jazz's intel logged a vessel taken out by the Decepticons. Every time his phone went off, his heart would clench, and he would brace himself, waiting for the news that would be the end of the world.

But it turned out there was something worse.

There was Skyfire missing his scheduled check-in after three weeks of expected radio silence. No sign on the deep space scanners of his craft on its return course. No distress signal, no homing beacon, no escape pod. No wreckage. No Decepticon record of a ship destroyed.

There was just nothing, nothing but endless space, an ocean so deep it would never give up its secrets, and Silverbolt couldn't even beg them to send someone to find an answer, because no-one could begin to guess where to look.

* * *

"Never give up hope" had been the motto of the Autobots since the Decepticons took Vos, but now they were telling Silverbolt to do the very opposite. To 'let go'. To 'move on'. To 'grieve'.

To give up.

People never gave him enough credit for stubbornness. He was too skilled at judging when to stand his ground and when to concede for most of them to have any idea how hard he could dig in when he had to.

He obediently went to therapy when it was suggested. It even helped a bit, although he had to keep changing doctors, since sooner or later the word 'acceptance' would come up, and he would be done. Three years went by that way. His brothers eventually stopped asking him if he was okay. They knew the answer, and they finally realised that asking the question wasn't going to change it.

Of all the anniversaries that had passed in that time – the day Skyfire had left, the day he had failed to make contact, the day they had declared him missing – somehow it was what should have been their tenth wedding anniversary that hit Silverbolt the hardest. He'd been carefully not thinking about it, congratulating himself on how it wasn't a big deal and he wasn't going to make a fuss. Then the day came and he woke up at the bottom of a hole so black and deep he thought he might never leave it.

Later, most of that day would be a haze, gratefully buried in memory. There was a lot of crying, fortunately without witnesses, since he'd taken care to schedule his brothers off-base for the day. By the end of it, he'd packed up Skyfire's possessions: his clothes, his gadgets, even his shampoo, and put them into storage, and it felt like admitting defeat even as he knew it was the only way to go on.

* * *

He should have seen it coming, really, but it still hit him like a truck when Air Raid fixed him with an unusually serious look one day and said, "You should try dating again."

"Again? When did I ever try it the first time?" Silverbolt replied, busying himself with making coffee to hide the fact that his hands were suddenly shaking. "I didn't meet Skyfire," and it was still hard to say his name, how could it still be so hard? "by going out and looking for people to date."

"No," Air Raid said, "you didn't. You were always too wrapped up in work, and looking out for us. It wasn't good for you then and it isn't good for you now."

"Don't tell me what is and isn't good for me," Silverbolt snapped. "Maybe I'm just not a dating sort of person."

"How would you know if you've never tried it?"

"I'm done with this conversation, Air Raid."

Air Raid sighed. "Right. Fine."

* * *

They declared Skyfire dead after eight years, according to standard procedure. When Silverbolt got the notification, he was conscious of an odd lack of emotion, a gap where he should have felt something. He'd thought it would provide a final closure, or rip the wound open again, but instead, he found it almost pointless. They couldn't ever know for sure what had happened to Skyfire. The words were only a legal necessity, permitting his will to be executed and his assets to officially pass to Silverbolt.

He was too busy to do anything about it, anyway. They were winning the war, at last, and with more and more territory coming under Autobot control, his air force was increasingly stretched. All forecasts suggested the Decepticons would be defeated within two years. Maybe sooner, if the defections continued at the same rate. Silverbolt couldn't imagine what life would be like after that. He was taking care not to try.

Someone on the Decepticons' side ran the same numbers, and came to the same conclusion. They could have surrendered, or at least tried to bargain, but instead, they pulled together all their forces for a single, deadly strike on Autobot headquarters.

They dropped a hyper-bomb. A nova-class payload. It was unthinkable, a line neither side had ever dreamed would be crossed. What was the point of winning the war if you had wrought such irrevocable damage on the planet you were trying to rule?

The whole of Iacon was vaporised in a second. Shockwaves and firestorms spread out from the centre of the blast, causing mass destruction for hundreds of kilometres. Millions upon millions of non-combatants died. It could have been a crippling blow to the Autobots, even at this stage in the war, if they had still kept their forces clustered in Iacon with Optimus Prime, but by luck and good judgement on the part of their commanders, the majority of the troops were now dispersed throughout Autobot-held territory.

That didn't mean they didn't suffer devastating losses.

Silverbolt was one of the leaders of the retaliatory attack on the Decepticons. They didn't put up much of a fight. They'd staked everything on wiping out enough of the Autobot high command to buy themselves a few more years, another chance. They didn't have the troops to fight off two-thirds of the Autobot forces in an all-out attack. 

And Silverbolt thought, privately, many years later, that perhaps they didn't have the heart, either... that perhaps the bomb had been a step too far even for Megatron.

* * *

It wasn't long after the end of the war that Silverbolt started hearing something he hadn't heard in... oh... almost twenty years: that he looked too young to be Air Commander.

At first he brushed the comments off as he always had. They came from the civilian leaders and officials he met with as Cybertron slowly attempted to regain its balance in peace time, people who knew his name and rank but had seldom if ever met him during the war. He supposed they were used to the holders of high rank in government being much older. Even so, it seemed odd, given that he was in his forties now.

It was only when someone phrased it slightly differently that Silverbolt realised that wasn't what they meant, that what he was hearing was, _You don't look as old as I know you are._

Did he look young for his age? It was always hard to see the changes in yourself over time, but he had just assumed they were there. He'd occasionally had the sad, wistful thought that Skyfire might not recognise him now, but when he pulled up an old photo to check, he was surprised to see that his face in the mirror really did look much as it had when he was thirty, or even when he was twenty-five.

Good genes, he supposed, putting it out of his mind.

* * *

"Have you thought about maybe seeing someone?" Fireflight said, and Silverbolt honestly didn't know what he meant, until he clarified, "I mean, you know... in a dating sort of way?"

Silverbolt had to bite his tongue not to snap back. Air Raid could be a nosy busybody, but Fireflight only meant well, and even after all these years, it was too easy to hurt him with a thoughtless word.

"It's been a little busy around here for that sort of thing," he said after a moment.

"It's been quieter and quieter every month," Fireflight replied. "If we've got time to take that beach vacation, you've got time to have dinner with someone, or--"

"If I meet anyone I want to have dinner with, I'm perfectly capable of arranging it for myself," Silverbolt said curtly. "I just haven't... met anyone dinner-worthy."

"You aren't going to if you don't try," Fireflight said with unusual bluntness. "I know you're not interested in the casual stuff like me and Air Raid are, but Skyfire wouldn't want you to hang onto his memory forever--"

" _Don't_." And that was too raw, too quick, and far too telling, and Silverbolt winced, and sighed. "It's not... that's not it. I'm not _deliberately_ not seeing anyone, okay? It just hasn't quite worked out. There's been so much happening for so long... I don't want to rush into anything."

"Okay," said Fireflight, after a pause that spoke volumes.

* * *

Slingshot's accident happened almost ten years to the day after Skyfire had left on his last mission, and for a while Silverbolt couldn't shake the conviction that the two were somehow cosmically connected, that he would now lose each of his brothers in turn on or around this day in the years to come.

But Slingshot woke up, after several awful weeks. To the doctors' surprise, he had suffered no brain damage (or at least, as Blades put it, masking emotion with his usual sharp tongue, no _additional_ brain damage). He was his normal, short-tempered self, telling them off for worrying, demanding to know if his plane had survived the crash, complaining that he was bored and it was their job to entertain him now he couldn't move anything below the neck.

It was reassuring, but at the same time Silverbolt thought Slingshot didn't quite believe the doctors who said the damage was irreversible. He thought he'd shake it off like he had the coma. People started using all those words again, like 'acceptance' and 'moving on', and it triggered something in Silverbolt that led to him ordering the doctors out of their own hospital ward until Skydive managed to calm him down.

"Pretending things will get better isn't good for him," Skydive said.

"Why not?" Silverbolt demanded. "If nothing's going to change, he'll have to get used to it eventually, and in the meantime, if anyone can recover through sheer bloody-mindedness, it's Slingshot!" And at Skydive's concerned look, he added, "He's already proved them wrong once."

He knew even as he said it how stupid it was, how much his own emotions were overflowing into the situation. He knew the world didn't work like that. He knew that, sooner or later, he would have to take a deep breath, and be the sensible one again, and help Slingshot adjust to life in a hospital bed in whatever way he could.

He would have done it, too, no matter how it pained him, if Slingshot hadn't unexpectedly done exactly what Silverbolt had despairingly suggested, and started to get better.

* * *

"It has to be the gestalt technology," First Aid said. Across the room, Slingshot was clinging onto a support frame with a black glower that dared anyone to comment as he slowly learned to walk again. "It's the only explanation. The tests show that his spinal cord is being gradually repaired."

"How is that even possible?" Hot Spot asked. "How does a... a glorified _radio_ fix that sort of damage?"

"It's a lot more than just a radio," Silverbolt said, watching Slingshot. The shaky steps he was taking still felt like a miracle. "It's organic technology, right, 'Aid? They designed it to be self-repairing. It's almost like a part of our bodies now. What if that works both ways? What if the tech sees our bodies as extensions of itself and repairs those too?"

"That's my guess," First Aid said. "We'll need to do more tests to be sure – on all of us, not just Slingshot. Of course, it's hard to know exactly what's going on without opening up someone's skull..."

Silverbolt shot him a horrified look. Hot Spot turned pale.

"… which we won't be doing any time soon," First Aid added in a hurry. "It would be far too dangerous when we don't know exactly how the implants might have changed since they were put in."

Silverbolt watched as Hot Spot raised a hand unconsciously to rub one of the scars that was almost hidden under his hair.

"Kind of creepy," he said, glancing at Silverbolt. "The idea that they can change. And change _us_."

"At least it seems they work to our advantage," First Aid replied.

"For now," Hot Spot muttered.

* * *

They kept it as quiet as they could, but rumours began to leak out. The doctors who'd treated Slingshot couldn't let something like this go without investigating. Even then, none of them really thought about the implications, beyond Slingshot's miraculous recovery. They were too busy looking for the files on the gestalt program.

"How can they be _gone_?" Silverbolt asked after yet another dead end. "Everything is backed up! That's been true since long before they started working on us..."

"The gestalt tech was classified top secret," Skydive replied. He'd been doing most of the searching, and his initial optimism had faded. He seemed resigned now. "It was only ever kept on high security servers. And those were... if not in Iacon, within range of the hyper bomb's EMP surge. We lost a lot of data with Iacon... and it's starting to look like the gestalt files were part of that."

"There's got to be something... a copy somewhere, a paper or something that summarises the findings..."

"Not that I can find," Skydive said quietly. "They buried it well."

"What about the Decepticons?" Silverbolt got up from behind his desk to pace distractedly. "They based their programs on what they stole from us..."

"And look at the results," Skydive said. "Half their gestalt teams died in the war and the other half disintegrated into insanity."

"Even so..."

"Even so, I've been looking. But all the Decepticon research files we recovered were booby-trapped by Shockwave and Soundwave and most of it was destroyed when our techs tried to access it."

"I can't believe this." Silverbolt stopped to look out of the window. His own reflection was dimly visible in the glass, and for a moment, even he was taken aback by how young he looked - how much like the teenager who'd been inducted into the gestalt program without fully understanding what it meant. "How can something as revolutionary as the gestalt concept have just been _lost_?"

"It may have been revolutionary, but it wasn't what they wanted," Skydive replied with a sigh. "We... weren't what they wanted. The original program was a failure, by its own metrics. And after the scandal broke, no-one was going to touch that area with a ten foot pole... the only people allowed access to the original research were the people who helped us adjust after Optimus took custody of us."

"So Ratchet, Wheeljack, Perceptor..."

"I've already contacted Perceptor. He's writing down everything he can remember."

"That's better than nothing," Silverbolt said.

* * *

It was on Silverbolt's fiftieth birthday - which Air Raid and Fireflight were insisting on celebrating in style despite his protests - that Silverbolt started to realise something else was going on.

It was looking around at the gathering that did it. Looking at friends and comrades who were much older now than when he'd first joined the Autobots. Seeing the streaks of grey in Jazz's hair and the way Bluestreak moved more slowly. And then looking at his team... at Hot Spot's... and seeing no such signs of age in any of them.

"Yes," said Perceptor when Silverbolt called him a few days later, "I was beginning to suspect it myself. If the gestalt tech proactively repairs damage... why shouldn't it prevent the aging process as well?"

"But that's..." Silverbolt could hardly breathe. There was a ringing in his ears. "We're not going to age? At all?"

"You haven't _been_ aging this whole time," Perceptor corrected. "It's been noticeable for a while, if I'm honest, but until we started looking at the gestalt tech, there was no reason to think it was anything other than luck."

"I... I can't believe this."

"It's quite the paradigm shift," said Perceptor. Then, very gently, he went on, "There are other implications, of course."

"There are?"

A pause.

"If the gestalt tech can repair the kind of damage that Slingshot suffered... and if it automatically counters the natural aging of the body... well..."

He paused again, but Silverbolt couldn't grasp his meaning, and remained silent and stunned.

"You may not be as mortal as the rest of us," Perceptor said finally. "In fact, you may live... for a very long time."

"How long?" Silverbolt whispered.

"Perhaps there is no limit," Perceptor replied quietly.

"You're saying... you're really saying that we've discovered _immortality_? By _accident_?"

"Many great scientific advances have been accidents, happy or otherwise. But I would not advise announcing the theory too widely just yet. Until we can reverse-engineer the gestalt tech, you are the only ones in receipt of this benefit. That may breed resentment, at best."

Silverbolt swallowed hard. "And at worst?"

"At worst," Perceptor said after another long pause, "I think you will be hunted."


	3. 3. Those Who Wait

The doctors had been urging Skyfire to come outside for some fresh air since his awakening, but he hadn't been able to bring himself to leave his room. He was glad now that he'd waited. Silverbolt's fingers interlaced tightly with his made it easier to take in the shock of the city below the hospital's rooftop garden. This was Altihex, they said. It bore no resemblance at all to his memories.

"I put a flag on your MIA record," Silverbolt was saying. "The highest priority, so no matter where I was, I'd know at once if they ever found you. I'd... forgotten about it until yesterday. When I got the alert, I... I couldn't believe it."

"But you came anyway," Skyfire said, struck by wonder and relief and painful gratitude all over again.

"How could I not?" Silverbolt rested his head against Skyfire's shoulder. "I had to know for sure, one way or the other."

For Skyfire, in subjective time, it felt like only a few weeks since he'd kissed Silverbolt goodbye, but he could sense the real length of time every time Silverbolt touched him. He would hesitate just slightly, as if checking for permission, or debating whether he should let himself. 

"Are the others--?"

"I haven't told them yet. I didn't know what to say. And now, I... well, I can't risk them all rushing in here together to see you."

Skyfire frowned. "What do you mean, risk?"

Silverbolt tensed. He lifted his head from Skyfire's shoulder and glanced around the garden with the quick expertise that Skyfire used to associate with Jazz and his covert ops team.

"We don't dare all be in the same place very often," Silverbolt said. "If someone tried to kidnap one of us when we're apart, the others would know. We have... contingency plans for if that happens, and we've been very public about them. No-one would dare. But if they could get all five of us at once... there are people, far too many people, who would risk it at any price."

Skyfire stared at him. " _Kidnap_ you? For what? I thought the war was--"

"The war was won a long time ago," Silverbolt said with twist of bitterness, "but immortality is an irresistible prize, isn't it?"

"I don't understand," said Skyfire, though he was terribly afraid that he did. "What would they—"

"No-one has been able to replicate the results of the gestalt tech," Silverbolt continued with calm detachment. "After Iacon... on top of the physical destruction, all data storage within a thousand kilometres was erased by the EMP from the hyper-bomb. The majority of the data was duplicated elsewhere, but the gestalt programme was still classified, so it was held only on certain secure servers, which were all within the blast radius."

He glanced at Skyfire, and continued with the same detachment.

"Once we realised what was happening to us – what the tech was doing – we volunteered for every experiment anyone suggested. We _wanted_ them to figure it out. We wanted everyone to be able to walk away from a crash like Slingshot's. We wanted everyone to live as long as we will."

He looked down at his hands.

"We still do," he said softly. "First Aid is still working on it. But there's a limit to what anyone can reverse-engineer when the tech is still grafted into our brains..."

Skyfire reached blindly for him, wrapping him tightly in his arms to quell the sickness rising in his throat again.

"We've all agreed," Silverbolt went on, "all ten of us, that if any of us die, we'll give our body to science. To First Aid, if possible, but otherwise... we've all made wills, we've all signed away our right to burial or cremation, but... but..."

"But there are people who don't want to wait," Skyfire said with grim certainty.

"Can you blame them?" Silverbolt mumbled into his shoulder. "In the time we've been alive, millions of people have died. Millions more will die before any one of us is likely to be killed. What's one life, or ten, compared to the whole rest of humanity--?"

"No. No, no..."

"No," Silverbolt agreed. "I won't let them. Maybe, if it were just me... if I were alone..."

Skyfire made a sound in his throat that was almost a cry, and Silverbolt tightened his arms with a whispered apology.

"I won't let them do that to the others," he said. "Not ever. I... have come to terms with my own selfishness. I _am_ choosing our lives over everyone else's. I won't let anyone... _vivisect_ my brothers, no matter what."

The anger almost hid the tremor in his voice, and if Skyfire hadn't known him so well, even after all this time, he might even have believed that Silverbolt could forgive himself for that choice.

* * *

The others had changed much more than Silverbolt. Skyfire supposed it was in part because Silverbolt had always been older than his years. Silverbolt took him to see them one by one. He was shocked at how mature they seemed, how far they were from the rowdy group of young men he'd come to think of as family.

But... Fireflight still had the sweetest, happiest smile, and Air Raid still laughed with wild delight, and Slingshot still twisted his mouth in the way that meant he was trying to be stoic in the face of strong emotion, and Skydive still froze in place, mouth slightly open, when he was surprised.

And they each still threw their arms around him and hugged him like a brother, and they each still yelled like teenagers at Silverbolt for not telling them sooner.

It was from them that Skyfire began to put together a picture of what the better part of a century had looked like for Silverbolt. He'd become a politician once there was no more need for an Air Commander, and from the sound of it, he'd been a damn good one, until mistrust and jealousy drove him - drove all of them - as far out of the public eye as they could get. But they'd had allies, old and new, and over time, between them, they had amassed enough wealth and connections to live their lives relatively undisturbed. 

"I think he acts as a privy adviser to the Prime and her government now," Skydive said at one point, quietly, "but we don't really know. He won't talk about anything like that over the comms, and when we get to see each other in person, he never wants to talk about his work."

Skyfire nodded, and felt all over again the pressure of three empty places here with them in Skydive's house. None of them ever saw more than one of the others at a time these days, and by the same logic, they seldom spent time with Hot Spot and his brothers, either. Slingshot and Blades had each other - and Skyfire was very careful not to express any of his private amazement that their relationship had not only lasted, but actually _out-lasted_ any other _in recorded history_ \- and Fireflight confided that the rest of them had all tried pairing off in various combinations at one point or another, just to see if it worked.

"Except Silverbolt," he added, glancing cautiously at Skyfire.

"He, uh... he must have... there must have been someone, though... right?"

"Not that he's ever told us about," Fireflight said. He fixed Skyfire with a very serious, very _old_ look. "Listen, if it turns out that living with him is.... weird, or hard, or not working for you... you're welcome here." And before Skyfire could even start to think of a response to that, Fireflight flashed his same old slightly-too-innocent smile. "As long as you're not going to tell me off for eating ice-cream for breakfast, because believe me, that ship has sailed."

* * *

Living with Silverbolt _was_ weird and hard, much though Skyfire hated to admit it.

It was still like finding himself in a waking nightmare at times. Even with Silverbolt here and alive, Skyfire was constantly battered on all sides by reminders of the life he had lost forever in the blink of a stasis field. Friends he'd known all through the war were dead, and they'd lived their whole lives without knowing what had happened to him. Iacon was just _gone..._ Iacon where he'd lived since the first moment he'd arrived at the Academy, where he'd met Starscream, joined the Autobots, met Silverbolt...

(When he discovered that Starscream had never in fact been definitively recorded as dead, that he'd last been seen piloting some sort of experimental space craft on some sort of crazy last-ditch Decepticon mission, Skyfire actually _laughed_ and laughed, nearly to the point of hysteria, until he had to get up from the computer and go through some of the breathing exercises his therapist was so keen on.)

Every trace of his old life was lost. Skyfire had nothing else in the world apart from Silverbolt and his brothers. All his possessions were long gone, except for a few Silverbolt had kept out of sentiment, including some framed pictures, and, for some reason, Skyfire's favourite tablet computer, now a hundred years obsolete.

"It just always made me think of you sitting in that chair by the window," Silverbolt said, when questioned, a softness in his voice that made Skyfire's heart ache.

After that first reunion in the hospital, they didn't hold each other, or kiss. Space seemed to open between them without either of them actively seeking it. Skyfire quietly removed his wedding ring as soon as he moved in, and Silverbolt didn't ask about it, so he figured that had been the right call. They didn't share a bed, even though Skyfire lay awake most nights feeling like he'd never sleep again unless he could listen to Silverbolt's breathing.

And the easy companionship, the way they'd always relaxed in each other's company, that was gone. There were too many things that could spring up out of nowhere: Skyfire would suddenly think of something he needed to know, or Silverbolt would remember something to tell him, and the past would engulf them like quicksand. They never talked about the time before Skyfire had left, only the time since, and one night, lying awake again, Skyfire wondered miserably if they had anything left to talk about now except the shadows of what had been and what might have been.

* * *

The funny thing about Air Raid was that at some point he had become the person who _fixed_ things, even more than Silverbolt. For all his impulsiveness when he was younger, he'd quickly developed an emotional intelligence that thoroughly understood people, and could cut through misunderstandings with directness, humour, and compassion.

When he came to visit, he took one look at the way they were carefully sitting some distance apart, and announced that the three of them were going on a day trip.

"I don't know if that's a good idea," Silverbolt said. He'd tensed at the suggestion. "There've been some worrying reports recently from my security team..."

"There are always worrying reports from your security team, that's what they're _for._ "

"Well, I can't really spare the time, anyway. I suppose if the two of you want to go..."

"You can spare the time and you're going to," said Air Raid quietly. "When did you last leave the house?"

Silverbolt hesitated, and looked away, and Air Raid nodded, mostly to himself. Skyfire had assumed that Silverbolt was staying in to keep him company, but Air Raid's expression told him that it was a far more longstanding habit than that. The idea of Silverbolt, of all people, living as a recluse was so painful he could have cried. And that pain was enough to override his own anxiety, the fear of going out among crowds of strangers in this new world, to make him suddenly _want_ to see something outside these walls.

"I'd like to go," he said. Then, with a glimmer of memory and a smile, "Assuming you're not dragging us somewhere with rollercoasters."

Air Raid blinked, then broke into peals of delighted laughter. "Oh _wow_ , I'd _forgotten_ that! It was your birthday - no, Silverbolt's? - and I told you we were going to a museum... oh my god, I was such an asshole. Silverbolt almost cried when he saw how tall the Super Rider was."

"I did _not,_ " Silverbolt retorted, as automatically and indignantly as if no time had passed at all, and Skyfire knew then that Air Raid had won.

* * *

There were no rollercoasters, but Skyfire still looked doubtfully at Air Raid when they arrived at their destination.

"Trust me," Air Raid said.

"Places like this still exist?" Silverbolt asked, partly joking, partly with genuine surprise. "I thought everybody ordered online."

"Just because you've never understood the joy of shopping doesn't mean other people don't," Air Raid said cheerfully as he led the way into the ground floor of the towering shopping mall. "There are always gonna be places like this."

Skyfire and Silverbolt exchanged a dubious look.

"And you thought we'd like to go shopping because...?" Skyfire said.

Air Raid rolled his eyes. "Have a little faith, would you? This way."

They followed him into an elevator and up to the seventh floor. Moving through the crowds made Skyfire feel more vulnerable than he ever had in space, somehow. It was odd - there was technically no difference between these strangers and the ones who would have been in this kind of mall a hundred years ago - but they _felt_ alien. Maybe it was the nagging knowledge that there was no chance - absolutely none - of recognising a face in that crowd. Maybe it was the differences in clothing and the small alterations in speech that he noticed as they passed. Or maybe it was all in his head, a side-effect of the colossal culture shock he was still suffering.

The seventh floor was entirely dedicated to technology. Skyfire smiled wistfully. He could see Air Raid's logic, but the devices here were so different from anything he recognised that he found them as overwhelming as everything else...

But Air Raid dragged them past the displays of brand new gadgets and round a corner into another section of the department, and suddenly Skyfire saw things he _did_ recognise. He stopped, startled, and Air Raid took one look at his face and grinned.

"So this isn't just any electronics store," he said. "This is nerd _central_ , at least according to Skydive. They have this whole section here where they trace the development of computer technology from the very beginning..."

"I had no idea this was was here," Silverbolt said wonderingly. "Isn't that one of those watches you and Fireflight had back when--"

"Isn't that a Z90-b?" Skyfire blurted out, drawn across to the display at the very start of the section. "This is the first navigational system built to take a shuttle out of orbit..."

"That's a bit before even our time," Silverbolt said.

"Yes, but I studied it in the Academy, it has this amazing set of calculations hard-coded into the firmware, it was really a huge leap forward at the time..."

Silverbolt looked at him almost startled, as if he didn't recognise him... or as if he finally did. A smile touched his face, for once without any bittersweetness.

"How did it work?" he asked, coming to stand at Skyfire's side.

Neither of them were really conscious of Air Raid slipping away. Or of how their conversation shifted as they moved among the displays, from Skyfire explaining the older technology, to both of them reminiscing about the devices they'd used in the past, to Silverbolt showing him how things had progressed over a hundred years. For the first time since he'd awoken in the hospital, Skyfire found himself fascinated and excited by the changes he saw, by the leaps of technology he would never have been able to witness in a normal lifetime. His enthusiasm drew Silverbolt in, and for the first time, he realised later, they talked about how things had changed without regret or sadness.

Air Raid eventually reappeared and hauled them away long enough to get lunch (and it turned out that mall food had neither changed nor particularly improved over the course of a century, which Skyfire found both reassuring and hilarious), during which he made no effort not to appear smug.

"All right, we should have trusted you," Skyfire said finally. "Stop smirking."

"Don't wanna. Can't make me," Air Raid said with a grin wider than the Kalis Canyon.

* * *

Skyfire was very familiar with the idea of a catalyst, but he was still amazed at the difference Air Raid's impromptu shopping trip made to the way he looked at the world. It gave him a place to start - and it reminded him of all the things he'd always found so exciting about progress and invention. Suddenly he remembered half a dozen research projects expected to take decades to complete, and realised that the answers were almost certainly right there, waiting for him to discover.

Silverbolt bought him a brand new, top of the line tablet computer before they left the mall. Skyfire used it to dive into the network, doggedly overcoming the changes in interface and terminology, and for weeks he lost himself in physics, chemistry, computer technology, and genetics. His interests had always been broad; now, with his specialist knowledge a century out of date, it was like being a new Academy student all over again, trying to pick something to focus on, always finding something new to catch his interest.

When he couldn't find enough details of some study or another, Silverbolt could usually get him access to research journals or archives. Silverbolt seemed to have access to pretty much anything he wanted, and Skyfire took full advantage of it.

Even though he was spending most of his time reading, learning, and exploring, somehow he was suddenly spending more time with Silverbolt, as well. It happened gradually, naturally: he'd ask Silverbolt to help him find something, Silverbolt would ask about it, Skyfire would explain... and they'd spend hours together following the thread.

It didn't feel awkward anymore. In fact, Skyfire realised with a jolt one day, it felt an awful lot like falling in love all over again.

* * *

"What's wrong?"

"Oh, nothing..." Silverbolt sighed, and raked his hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration that hadn't changed even slightly. "Politics. I'm starting to feel like we're on a swing and we're just going to keep coming back to the same point. We tried this fifty years ago, it didn't work, now people want to try it again for all the same reasons and with all the same excuses about why it'll work _this_ time..."

"I didn't realise Air Raid had become Prime."

Silverbolt stared at him, bewildered, for several seconds before he got the joke. When he laughed, Skyfire's heart soared.

"I can only tell them it's a bad idea so many times before they'll stop listening to me," Silverbolt said after a moment. "There has to be a point where I let them get on with it and try to mitigate the damage... why are you laughing?"

"Because I'm still not sure if you're talking about the Cybertronian government or the other Aerials."

Silverbolt swatted him with a sheaf of paper. Skyfire ducked, grinning, and Silverbolt smiled back.

"Listen," Skyfire said, seized by an impulse driven by Silverbolt's smile, "could we... go somewhere? Have dinner? Get away from the network for a bit? Is that still something people do?"

He'd caught Silverbolt off-guard, judging by the flush of colour that hit his face, but he was still smiling, even if it had turned a bit wistful now.

"Yes, that's still something people do," he said. "But I'll have to ask one of the others for suggestions. I can't remember the last time I went out for dinner."

* * *

They ended up in the kind of restaurant where the silverware was actually silver, and the champagne didn't have a price next to it on the menu because if you had to ask, you couldn't afford it. It was categorically not the sort of place they'd ever frequented before, and Skyfire was initially uncomfortable, until he saw Silverbolt's delight at the menu.

"I haven't had this since... oh, look, I didn't know you could still get those."

And from the way Silverbolt casually handed over a credit chip to the waiter with instructions to put everything on it, money wasn't an issue here. Skyfire hadn't quite worked up the courage to ask Silverbolt just how rich he was at this point. He lived modestly enough in his home, apart from security that would have made Red Alert ecstatic, but Skyfire supposed even if he only accounted for interest on their savings before he'd left, that would come to somewhere in the region of... no, wait, he'd need to account for the banking crisis he'd read about...

"Skyfire? Is everything okay? You're frowning."

Skyfire snapped guiltily back into the moment. "I'm fine. I don't recognise half these things, though. What's good?"

It turned out most of the menu was good, or at least good enough for Silverbolt to want to order one of almost everything so Skyfire could try it all. Skyfire would have protested the extravagance, except that Silverbolt was clearly enjoying himself so much... and he wasn't wrong about the dishes, either.

One of the restaurant's many flourishes was the presence of a live pianist producing pleasing yet unobtrusive music on a grand piano across the room. As they waited for coffee, Skyfire asked, "Do you still play?"

Silverbolt shook his head. "Not really. I... kind of got out of the habit and never picked it up again."

"Oh." Skyfire used to like listening to Silverbolt messing around on a keyboard. Silverbolt, of course, had been very self-effacing about his skill and claimed he could never have reached performance standard, but since Skyfire didn't have a musical bone in his body, it had always seemed almost magical to him. "That's... a shame."

Silverbolt looked down at the table. "I suppose so. I hadn't thought about it in years, really."

Skyfire changed the subject quickly. The last thing he'd wanted was to bring that shadow of pain back into Silverbolt's face. The moment passed, the coffee arrived, and they finished the evening with a series of amusing recollections about Fireflight's brief attempts to learn jazz saxophone.

* * *

In the end, it was some little thing that did it, something that Skyfire, later, wouldn't even be able to recall. Some interesting research he'd called Silverbolt over to see, something that meant they were leaning in close on the couch to look at Skyfire's screen. And something about what he was saying - or the way he was saying it - that made Silverbolt say, "Skyfire," in a tone of voice that got Skyfire's utter focused attention, right before Silverbolt kissed him.

It wasn't like it had been at the hospital, where they'd rushed together and clung on like they were drowning. It was almost like starting over again. And at the same time it felt so right, such a _relief_ , that Skyfire could have cried.

* * *

It was a few weeks later, half-asleep with Silverbolt in his arms, that Skyfire suddenly had The Thought.

It was so tenuous and terrifying that he hardly dared look straight at it, but once it had occurred to him, he knew he wouldn't be able to let it go.

He found the old tablet where he'd left it, in a drawer with his wedding ring. He paused, looking at the ring, but... no, better not go there yet, either.

The tablet's battery was long dead and there was no technology that would interface with its data storage. At least, not modern technology. But there had been a chain to follow to get to this point, and so Skyfire worked his way backwards down the links until he found something that could. He searched auction sites and collectors' catalogues for parts. He probably could have asked Silverbolt to get him what he needed, but he didn't dare tell Silverbolt, not yet. Not until he'd had a chance to check if he was remembering right. He couldn't bear to give Silverbolt any sort of false hope.

When he finally managed to copy the tablet's data onto a slightly less ancient device, Skyfire could barely breathe. Slowly, tentatively, he navigated through the file system, checking for corruption. The data had survived with remarkable fidelity. There were his personal files, photographs of Silverbolt and the others, but also many of the projects he'd been working on: he was never very good at separating his work from his personal life. They were all out-dated now, chemistry overwritten and physics overturned, except...

Except the files on the gestalt programme, downloaded in full, back when Skyfire had the clearance for classified information, back when he'd first been falling in love with Silverbolt. He'd wanted to understand it, so he could explain to Silverbolt and his brothers what had been done to them, and answer some of the questions they'd lived with all their lives. It had been in flagrant breach of the regulations about data security, but he'd done it anyway, confident in the homebrewed encryption on his tablet...

He took a deep, deep breath, and felt tears sting his eyes. He didn't believe in predestination. He had never believed in any god. But he was strikingly, painfully aware in that instant that if he had never left, never been lost, these files would have long ago been wiped. He would have aged and died and left Silverbolt behind, alone in a cage of guilt, unable even to gather his brothers around him for fear of losing them all.

It took maybe three weeks to assemble the rest of the chain, to carefully copy the data over and over again, until he could finally, with shaking hands, load it onto a modern device, and _upload_ it - which he did, immediately - to data storage services spread as far across the planet as geometry would allow.

Then he went and found Silverbolt, who was sitting at the piano he'd rather sheepishly impulse-bought, relearning the notes with a furrow of concentration on his brow.

"What's this?" he asked, confused, when Skyfire handed him the tablet with its screen full of diagrams and numbers.

"The start of something new," Skyfire replied.

* * *

_So we sing a lullaby_  
 _To the lonely hearts tonight_  
 _Let it set your heart on fire_  
 _Let it set you free_  
 _When you're fighting to believe_  
 _In a love that you can't see_  
 _Just know there is a purpose_  
 _For those who wait_  
\-- [Fireflight, "For Those Who Wait"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcRMNiZtj5s)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Yes, there really is a band called Fireflight.)


	4. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I LEFT SOMETHING OUT.

The effects of coming out of such a long stasis were unpleasant, to say the least. The physical symptoms were compounded by Perceptor's uncertainty as to what, exactly, he was awakening to. He had no sense of how much time had passed, and at first he was too groggy and disorientated to ask questions. He didn't recognise any of the voices around him - but then, a trained medical team would be monitoring his revival, so even if Silverbolt or Hot Spot were here, they wouldn't necessarily be in the room.

The decision to put himself 'on ice' hadn't been made lightly. There were a hundred ways long-term stasis could go wrong, even in a secure medical facility, under the watchful eye of dear friends who could be relied upon to take good care of his frozen body. The fact that he was able to think it implied it hadn't happened - probably - but there were other ways his gamble could have failed. They might have been forced to revive him even though the gestalt tech was no better understood than it had been when he went under - or worse, Silverbolt and the others might be dead, and he might be awakening to live out what was left of his life in a strange future without hope of ever seeing a friendly face again...

But he had made his choice.

"You will need someone you can trust, when you finally make the breakthrough," he'd said to the two gestalt leaders. They still both looked so young, even though they should by rights be nearing retirement. "And I have at least some familiarity with the technology. Wake me up when you find the key."

And it hadn't all been altruism, of course. There was also the curiosity he'd never tried to tame, the desire to see more, learn more, and be there when the future happened. He'd rolled the dice, and now he would see where they had landed.

"Yes," the nurse said when Perceptor was able to ask about his revival, "your friends are both here. One of them is the person who signed the release - Silver... something?"

"Silverbolt?"

"Yes, that's it. I'm sorry, I didn't get the other guy's name."

But that didn't matter. If Silverbolt was here, then the other person could only be one of the other gestalt members - Hot Spot, perhaps, or Skydive, or maybe Fireflight, whom Perceptor had always had a secret soft spot for - or it would be a stranger. There could be no surprises here.

He kept thinking that right up until the door opened and Skyfire walked in.


End file.
